Citing the 9/11 attacks and
security concerns, officials have limited public access to emergency
preparations.

After the Bhopal chemical leak
in India killed thousands in 1984, Congress decided public safety required
openness about the chemical plants in our midst.

Now, some officials have
decided secrecy is better.

Officials across the United
States, including some in the Philadelphia region, have ended public access
to information about facilities with hazardous materials, a new survey
shows.

Citing the 9/11 attacks and
security concerns, they refuse to release the information despite a 1986
federal law called the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.
It requires communities to develop - and make public - plans for coping with
disasters at chemical or hazardous-material plants or facilities.

The survey found that
officials refused 36 percent of the time to release any of the plans.

In this area, response was
mixed. In the four Pennsylvania counties ringing Philadelphia, officials
agreed the public could see the plans.

But Delaware County officials
said they would give the FBI the name of anyone who asked. In Chester
County, emergency managers refused to release any information - but relented
after The Inquirer faxed them the federal law.

In Philadelphia, the head of
an emergency planning committee took a month to decide whether the plans
were public.

Eventually, chairman David
Binder said a reporter could review plans at a city office - but only if the
reporter knew enough to ask for a specific plan.

The list of possibly hazardous
sites, he said, was still secret.

Access was mixed in New
Jersey, too. In Burlington County, Pemberton Township's emergency management
coordinator said the public had a right to see the plan: "That's why it's
called the Right-to-Know Act," Craig Augustoni said.

Yet in Camden County,
Pennsauken officials would not release plans for dealing with a disaster at
the Dow chemical plant or other facilities within the township.

Elsewhere, secrecy was more
common. The highest rejection rate happened here in the Mid-Atlantic region,
where officials turned down nearly half the requests. Agencies in the South
were the most open, making plans public three-quarters of the time.

Paul Orum, a consultant on
chemical safety, said such secrecy was misguided.

"Giving people a clear idea of
the hazards in the community is key to getting public support for emergency
preparedness," said Orum, former director of the Working Group on Community
Right to Know.

In Bhopal, the world's worst
single industrial accident, at least 3,000 people died initially and
thousands more later, in a disaster aggravated because the plant had no plan
to cope with a spill and had kept local leaders ignorant about the
pesticides produced there.

In a coordinated effort by
journalism groups, reporters, student journalists, and volunteers from the
League of Women Voters fanned out across the nation earlier this year to
request the emergency plans. The federal law passed two years after Bhopal
says the plans "shall be made available to the general public."

The plans identify facilities
with hazardous materials and explain how authorities will cope with a
dangerous release.

In all, reporters from 162
news organizations, including The Inquirer, took part, as did other
volunteers. They sought emergency plans from 375 emergency planning
committees in 36 states, putting requests in for about 1 out of every 8
plans in the United States.

The results were made public
today.

Terrorism was mentioned
repeatedly as a reason for keeping planssecret.

A freelance radio reporter in
Louisiana was denied access to the plan in New Orleans by an official who
told her "it wasn't the kind of information we want the terrorists to get."

Several reporters said they
were told they were getting documents because they didn't look like
terrorists.

In other cases, the request
drew suspicion. A query from the Columbus Dispatch newspaper prompted the
Ohio State Highway Patrol to e-mail the state's 88 counties to ask them to
be on the alert for similar requests.

In Philadelphia, the release
of emergency response plans for chemical facilities is overseen by Binder,
an executive with a locally based ammonia company. He chairs the city
emergency planning committee.

After a month's consideration,
Binder said last week plans could be inspected at a city office with a
monitor watching - but only if those requesting plans know what they want.
"I cannot give you a list of facilities," he said in an e-mail.

MaryAnn E. Marrocolo, the
city's new deputy managing director of emergency management and
preparedness, also declined to release the city's overall disaster
management plan, a 200-page document covering all manner of emergencies,
from hurricanes to nuclear meltdowns.

"While you may not have evil
intent," she said, "somebody might, and there might be one detail in there
that speaks to their plans."

The Inquirer's appeal is
pending.

In Delaware County, Edward
Doyle, cochair of the Delaware County Local Emergency Planning Committee,
said the county would make all plans public - but would inform the FBI and
plant operators of all requests.

"It's not intended to keep
people from seeing the information but to ensure that those seeing it are
seeing it for the reasons they're supposed to be seeing it," he said.

Doyle said he could remember
only two requests for the plans in the last two decades.

In New Jersey, access to plans
related to chemical plants is often controlled by officials in cities and
towns. Access varied in a sampling of cities The Inquirer selected.

In Gloucester County,
officials in West Deptford Township readily made public hundreds of pages
detailing how they would cope with any disaster at the Eagle Point Refinery
or other facilities. The plans contain everything from where the emergency
command center would be to how to handle mass casualties.

But Jack Mattera, head of
emergency management in Pennsauken Township, would not release the
township's plan for responding to an accident at a number of chemical
plants.

He said Camden County
officials had told him such plans were not public, citing a 2002 executive
order from then-Gov. Jim McGreevey barring release of documents that might
aid "sabotage or terrorism."

The Inquirer wrote to county
officials urging the plans' release, arguing that federal law trumps state
directives.

Though the plans were public
in the Pennsylvania suburbs, officials in Bucks and Montgomery Counties
required those seeking the information to fill out forms or write letters
identifying themselves.

Reporters elsewhere ran into
more severe obstacles. In Illinois, police ran the name of a reporter
through a database to see whether he'd ever been arrested.